The WE Finance Code’s power lies in its ability to connect organizations across the globe around a common cause: financing women entrepreneurs so they can grow, add jobs, and bring value to their communities and countries. Right now, more than 28 countries are piloting the Code.
Eight organizations have also joined the Code as Global Signatories. Vital to the Code’s purpose, Global Signatories are institutions and organizations that make a pledge designed to support women entrepreneurs. Some are organizations with hundreds of members; others are institutions with a global reach. They are adding significantly to the success of the WE Finance Code.
Global Signatories help transfer their knowledge, know-how, and networks to support Code pilots, and engage their members or other ecosystem partners at a country level to participate in the Code. They also herald efforts to integrate Code activities into wider finance and entrepreneurial ecosystems. Global Signatories have a common goal to support women entrepreneurs, but how they engage varies. A global bank’s commitments, for instance, look different from those of a member organization or knowledge partner.
The strength and success of the Code’s Global Signatories program comes from the broad range of commitments and partnerships. Partnerships are strategically matched to country pilot needs. Each pledge is aligned with the organizations’ strengths and resources, and each pledge includes commitments in Data, Leadership and Action to support women entrepreneurs.
At a recent webinar for We-Fi Implementing Partners and members of the global WE Finance Code Community of Champions, four Global Signatories shared some of their programs and activities so that Code Champions working at national levels can find ways to collaborate with them. “We hope you can easily spot the synergies and find ways to collaborate going forward,” said Zsofia Zambo, We-Fi Consultant.
“Collaboration is not easy. It requires the partners involved to be intentional, it takes time and commitment, most of all, it has to make sense. The We Finance Code provides the platform for all these ingredients to come together and result in transformational change,” said Farid Tadros, Senior Operations Officer at the World Bank. “We are beginning to see signs of organic collaborations, which is exciting.”
The webinar brought to light two entry points for Implementing Partners and country-level Code Champions to work with Global Signatories:
1.) Country-level Champions and Implementing Partners can reach out to Global Signatories to ask for connections to their local members that could sign the WE Finance Code in their countries.
2.) The Global Signatories offer valuable resources for people working to advance finance for women entrepreneurs, including regional coordinators, tools, guides, convenings and programs.
Read on about the four Global Signatories who participated in the webinar and how to contact them to engage at the national and local levels:
World Savings and Retail Banking Institute
The World Savings and Retail Banking Institute brings together regionally rooted and socially committed financial institutions across the globe. In 2024, these institutions channeled USD 3.2B in philanthropic investments.
WSBI’s Development Finance Unit, Scale2Save, mobilizes grant funding, credit lines and guarantees for its institutions to work on gender equality combined with climate resilience, particularly targeting rural businesses. Weselina Angelow, Programme Director, outlined three examples of ways WSBI could help in pilot countries:
- Help institutions in Code pilot countries scale up their credit lending activities to women, or to launch portfolios from scratch, supported by gender-focused change management coaching and the generation of gender data insight.
- Support institutions to launch the Code in their countries.
- WSBI can also work with institutions to mobilize guarantees and restructure loans, ensuring funding flows into projects that support gender equality and climate resilience.
Angelow shared in the webinar that WSBI’s institutions have found that loan applications, approvals and outstanding loans are lower for WSMEs than for women-led microenterprises. Although the NPL ratios are low – 1.53% – the money channeled through WMSMEs remains much lower than for their male counterparts, Angelow reported. She provided a real-world example of the barrier that economists and others have long recognized, and that We-Fi and the WE Finance Code were set up to address: financial institutions, even well-intentioned ones, are missing a huge market opportunity to finance growing women-led companies.
“We are now moving to the next level, as we want to work with institutions to help overcome the financing gaps and implement solutions with these institutions,” she said.
UN Women
UN Women delivers programs, policies and standards that uphold women’s human rights and ensure that every woman and girl lives up to her full potential. It’s active in many countries that are also piloting the WE Finance Code.
“We focus on galvanizing inclusive ecosystems for women’s entrepreneurship to develop,” said Vanina Vincensini, Sustainable Finance and IFI Partnerships Advisor. “The primary goal of our work on financing … is to support an increase of the volume and the quality of financing that goes toward solving inequality challenges.”
Vincensini encouraged Code Champions and Implementing Partners to reach out. She outlined three areas for collaboration.
- As part of its Code commitments, UN Women is working on raising awareness and capacity-building on innovative financing instruments, she said. For Code Champions and IPs, this could translate into an opportunity to convene financial sector stakeholders around the Code and the opportunity presented by gender bonds to support WSME financing.
- UN Women is also building a supportive financial ecosystem for women entrepreneurs, including through normative and technical support to financial institutions. That creates an opportunity to collaborate via programmatic work or capacity building on topics ranging from internal gender equality policies to financing WSMEs.
- UN Women is also engaging in visibility and advocacy on financing women entrepreneurs at key policy and industry events. They are open to opportunities to explore the best collaborations on giving visibility to the topic throughout 2026. “The themes of these programs are essentially revolving around gender lens investing,” she said, noting that climate and care financing are also of interest.
UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative
The United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) is a UN-convened network of over 450 banks, insurers, and investors, along with more than 100 supporting institutions, dedicated to accelerating sustainable development. UNEP FI offers a wealth of resources, including open-source tools for holistic impact analysis, science-based guidance on best practices, peer learning opportunities, training sessions, webinars, and active working groups.
Its key programs include the Principles for Responsible Banking (PRB) and the Principles for Sustainable Insurance (PSI), which provide financial institutions with frameworks to integrate sustainability into their strategies and operations. UNEP FI also develops essential guidance, such as the Gender Equality Guidance for Banks and the Financial Health and Inclusion Guidance, which help financial institutions set impactful targets and implement effective strategies to promote healthy and inclusive economies in their markets of operation.
Laura Diaz Zea, Social Impact Lead for Banks at UNEP FI, highlighted the importance of data-driven action: “We work closely with financial institutions to ensure that the data being generated isn’t just collected but actively used to shape more inclusive and effective financial strategies.”
UNEP FI is committed to promoting the WE Fi Code, supporting data collection and analysis among banks, encouraging the prioritization of gender equality and financial health and inclusion, and fostering innovation to bridge the financing gap for women-led small and medium enterprises (WSMEs). This includes advocating for the use of the Code’s core indicators and enhancing data analytics. With regional presence across the globe, UNEP FI can be a key partner in engaging the financial sector to advance inclusive and sustainable finance.
Women's World Banking
Women’s World Banking is dedicated to serving 1 billion women who are currently excluded from the formal financial sector, partnering with financial institutions and policy makers to design and develop solutions to facilitate systemic change for women. Through Women’s World Banking Asset Management, it also takes an equity stake to advance women’s financial security, independence, and prosperity.
WWB has partnered with 94 policy and regulatory bodies across 49 countries and trained 326 future leaders from 71 institutions to advance women’s financial inclusion and close the leadership gender gap.
Pallavi T. Madhok, Vice President, Advisory Services, South Asia, described some of WWB’s interventions, which may open the door to collaboration. She noted that the organization takes four approaches:
- Designing products and solutions to serve women better
- Unmasking current biases in lending processes
- Supporting organizations and women customers to use loans better for productive uses
- Looking for channel innovations for its partner organizations
She highlighted WWB’s work in India, offering an example of a company called Bike Bazaar that offers lending for electric bikes – a key issue for women in India, facing mobility challenges. “But the dealer points were not friendly to women at all,” she said. “We had to open a new channel for them so that more women could get access to capital.”
To unmask biases in lending processes, WWB uses large data sets and statistical methodologies to identify where bias could be in the lending funnel and then looks at solutions to intervene, she said.
Interested in partnering with these Global Signatories? National champions and implementers are welcome to reach out to Zsofia Zambo at zzambo@worldbank.org.
By Elizabeth MacBride, Senior Knowledge and Advocacy Consultant, We-Fi Secretariat
